I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for sending control information in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SCFDMA) systems.
A wireless communication system may include many base stations that can support communication for many terminals on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. The system may utilize various control channels to support data transmission on the forward and reverse links. For example, a base station may transmit control information to assign resources to terminals, to acknowledge packets received from the terminals, to inform the terminals of operating conditions at the base station, etc. The control information sent by the base station, although beneficial, represent overhead in the system.
There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to efficiently send control information in a wireless communication system.